


The Woes of a Prince's Advisor

by GodmotherToClarion



Series: Sped By Flame [2]
Category: Free!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Splash Free, Arabian AU, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Haru being Haru, M/M, Rin is a dork, Wedding Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-10
Updated: 2018-07-10
Packaged: 2019-06-08 14:06:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15245040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GodmotherToClarion/pseuds/GodmotherToClarion
Summary: In which Rin suffers.





	The Woes of a Prince's Advisor

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! This work is actually set between chapters 7 and 8 of my Arabian AU fanfiction [Slain By Fire, Sped By Flame](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12014736/chapters/27190440), but can be read independently. In this AU, Haru is engaged to Ran (he later breaks the engagement, and marries Makoto). Rin isMakoto's advisor, and engaged to Seijurou's younger sister. 
> 
> Dedicated to the beautiful alsas, to whom this oneshot was promised several months ago. I hope you enjoy it, and thank you so much for everything! <3

Haruka Nanase had passed his share of dull afternoons over the course of his nineteen years. 

Of course the better part had been spent in assembly, sitting quietly at his cousin’s side while making notes on a great sheaf of ivory parchment—and in his youth he had hated them with every fiber of his being, marching into the meeting chamber every seventh day with a turn in his mouth that better suited a funeral. Nevertheless he did his duty without a word of complaint, as befitted a boy of his standing; he was his cousin Aki’s right hand and heir to the throne beside him, and so both lads had their part to play in the royal court of Sahrastan. 

_ This  _ was far worse. 

“And by the Goddess I swear—”

“You sound as if you would rather die than marry her, you know,” said Haru idly, folding his hands on his chest. “It would be better if you kept to the vows you wrote, for surely you cannot go with these.”

“Oh, you are one to talk,” scoffed the boy sitting by the looking-glass, turning around to face his friend with a goose-quill clutched in his hand. “ _ Your  _ betrothal is over and done with, and you need never worry at all for your wedding to Ran.”

Rin shot Haru a pointed glare before dropping his head on the table, groaning into his linen sleeves as he threw his pen to the floor. 

“This will never do,” he muttered. “I have loved Sakura all my life, and still I sweat and shiver at the thought of saying my vows for fear she should not like them. What ought I to do, Haru?”

“Ask her to listen to them, for Heaven’s sake,” rejoined his companion, falling flat on the bed. “Perhaps she is fretting just as you are, and—”

“Sakura would never trouble herself over such a thing,” laughed Rin. “She wrote her vows long ago, when we were only children, but fool that I was I never guessed that she wished to say them to me.”

“Here,” said Haru, bouncing up from the quilt and running to stand by the window. “You cannot practice with a looking-glass, Rin. Come hither, then! I shall be Sakura, and you shall be yourself; recite the vows to me as if I were your bride, and perhaps they shall go better so.”

Rin stopped short and laughed again at the picture, for Haru had tied a silken shawl round his head for Sakura’s flaming hair—and turned his gaze up to Rin with a soft love-look in his eye, as if the advisor had won his heart and then his hand for good measure. 

“ _ Haru _ ,” cackled the older boy, “She has never once looked at me in such a stricken way, and you know it as well as I do _. _ ”

“Go on, then,” urged Haru. “Speak to me as if you were at your wedding, and then you will not forget again.”

“Oh, very well,” sighed Rin. He tucked his hands behind his back like a schoolboy reciting his lessons, staring at the prince on the window-seat as if he could not quite fathom that Haru had agreed to aid him at all. The boy who arrived in Qasr two moons previously had been given to silence and melancholy, speaking only when he was called upon and even then but rarely...until small Milad came to the palace, and altered his guardian wholly. 

“Where is Milad?” asked the advisor, realizing for the first time that the dark-haired baby was missing from his crib. 

“Your vows, Rin,” ordered his friend, tucking the last of his hair beneath the shawl. “Makoto took him to the kitchens for luncheon, and unless you wish to practice before your liege—”

“Nay!” came the shout. Rin took a breath and steadied his trembling hands, thinking with all his might of his bride as he parted his lips to speak.

*        *        *

“I am the worst bridegroom there ever was,” lamented the advisor some hours later, lying face-down on Makoto’s pillow as Haru sat on the clothes chest. “I nearly struck poor Rei in the face on the day I asked for Sakura’s hand, and then I hurt Nagisa’s ankle—and now I shall spoil the wedding-day, for fear of making a fool of myself.”

“You make a fool of yourself nearly twice a week,” Haru reminded him. “On Isha’s day with your slippers, and then yesterday—”

“ _ Haru!”  _ wailed Rin. 

He would have reproved his companion further, but at that moment there came a knock from the chamber beyond—followed by a peal of childish laughter, which stirred the prince from his perch by the bed and brought him running to the door.

“ _ Mas’al-khayr,  _ Haru-chan,” said Makoto, surrendering small Milad to Haru’s embrace as he crossed the sloping threshold. He stopped in his tracks when he saw the advisor slumped on the satin eiderdown, wondering in silence at the sweat on his cheeks and the crumpled scroll on the dressing-table. “What are you doing here, Rin?”

“Do not you dare!” cried the younger lad, glaring daggers at Haru as the Iwatobian opened his mouth. “I came to visit with Haru for the afternoon, and that is all.” He rose from the bed and gathered his papers into a satchel, making straight for the sitting room until Haru shot out a slender arm and caught the back of his robe. 

“You shall not depart until I give you leave, my fine friend.” He shut the door and turned to Makoto, taking the Qasrian’s hand in his and leading him away to the window-seat. 

“Will you stand here, Makoto?” he beseeched. “Rin has been reciting his wedding oaths all afternoon, and he has not even once reached the end without choking or downing a goblet of water.”

“I will stand wherever you wish, Haru-chan,” said Makoto, perplexed. “But what good would it be to Rin?”

“I shall say his oaths to you, and he must listen,” declared the prince. He whisked the scroll from Rin’s bewildered grasp and searched for his own fine writing, for he could not yet read the Eastern script well enough to decipher the advisor’s hand. 

“Very well,” smiled Makoto, bending down to kiss small Milad’s brow. The child had fallen fast asleep where he lay on Haru’s shoulder, curled against his father’s pale neck with a lock of black hair in his fist. “Shall I sit here then, my heart?”

“ _ Hai _ ,” murmured Haru, answering in his own tongue as he found his place on the page. “I think I will recite my own, for I cannot read yours at all. Now listen, Rin, or I shall tell Sakura of all I was made to hear today.”

He cleared his throat over Rin’s low grumbling, looking up into Makoto’s face as he began the promise. 

“It has always been grief to me, that I cannot recall our first meeting,” he said softly, glancing back down at the parchment as he spoke. “It was on the day of your birth, and I was a lad of two—or so our mothers have always said. But from them I heard that I loved you before you were three hours old, and so my love has endured for these last eighteen years and a half. I shall never possess you, my heart, for you belong to yourself—but from now to the  _ shamsal’s _ ending I vow to you all that is mine. I may never command you, for you are as free as the winds—but still I will serve you faithfully, and to my last waking hour. To you I give the first wealth of my toil and the first sweet drink from my cup, and in your care my life and death and all my laughter and sorrows.”

His voice was dark and tender at once, as if he were newly wounded—and as Rin looked between the two lads he saw that Makoto had not yet relinquished his grasp on Haru’s hand, clasping it near to the chain on his breast as if he feared to lose it. It seemed that the princes had forgotten the advisor’s presence entirely, and setting his chin on his knees he sat and wondered why it was so. 

“I shall be your champion and your comfort in all things, my darling, and so with this jewel I give you my hand as bridegroom.”

Though the vows had drawn to an end neither of the two looked away, and at last Rin coughed to clear the stillness and took back his parchment from Haru. 

“ _ Shukraan,  _ Haru,” he said, making his friend a low bow as he turned to take his leave. For a moment it seemed that Makoto had noticed his going, but as he sprang into the parlor he saw that it was not so. Instead the prince had drawn Haru down to sit on the bench beside him, murmuring swiftly in the common speech so that Rin could not hear what he said. 

“Those two,” he muttered, making his escape down the corridor with his girdle flying behind him. “Betimes I think  _ they  _ ought to be wed, and spare us all their sweethearting.”

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Find me on tumblr at [godmothertoclarion](https://godmothertoclarion.tumblr.com)!


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